About Avenue Calgary

Avenue Calgary

Overview

Avenue Calgary — published simply as Avenue — is the city lifestyle magazine of Calgary, Alberta. Published by RedPoint Media Group, it pairs a print magazine distributed every two months with a busy website, avenuecalgary.com, that publishes local stories daily. Its remit is the life of the city itself: the people, restaurants, neighbourhoods, homes, arts organizations, businesses and issues that define Calgary for the people who live there.

The magazine is best known for three signature editorial franchises: its annual Best Restaurants list, its annual Top 40 Under 40, which has recognized young Calgary achievers since the magazine's early years, and Best Neighbourhoods, its data-driven ranking of where to live in the city. A fourth program, the Made in Alberta Awards, celebrates products made in the province. The magazine is distributed free at locations around Calgary, and readers can also take out paid print subscriptions or join Avenue's A-List membership program, which the publisher introduced to let loyal readers support the magazine directly.

Avenue has been publishing since December 1994, which makes it one of the longest-running city magazines in Western Canada. In 2020 it was named Alberta Magazine of the Year by the Alberta Magazine Publishers Association, and over three decades it has collected honours from the International Regional Magazine Association, the Western Magazine Awards and Canada's National Magazine Awards.

History

Avenue's first issue appeared in December 1994. It was a slim, 24-page magazine with an orange cover featuring One Yellow Rabbit, the Calgary theatre company — a look unlike anything else on the city's newsstands at the time. Val Fortney, who was brought in to lead the editorial team, recalled in a 30th-anniversary reflection published in the magazine's January 2025 issue that the shoestring publication was not obviously destined to last, yet by 1996 it had already been named the best new magazine in the country. The early Avenue built its identity on city personalities, covering each cover with a Calgarian, and on a willingness to take creative risks with photography and illustration.

In 2003 the magazine was purchased by RedPoint Media Group, the Calgary publisher that also owned the former Calgary Magazine. The new ownership injected resources into the title: where the inaugural issue had been 24 pages, RedPoint-era issues at times surpassed 200 pages. The magazine's largest-ever issue arrived in November 2014 — a 270-page edition built around the annual Top 40 Under 40 list.

For much of that period the magazine's editor was Käthe Lemon, who led Avenue's editorial team for 15 years and was named Editor of the Year by the Alberta Magazine Publishers Association in 2007. RedPoint itself was a family business for most of Avenue's life: owned first by Don Graves and then by his son Pete Graves. In February 2023, Graves sold RedPoint to two of its own executives — Lemon, by then the company's president, and Roger Jewett, its chief financial officer, who became chief executive. Lemon and Jewett announced that the magazine would remain free, supported by subscriptions, memberships and advertising, and that the company would expand its custom publishing and marketing services alongside the magazine.

Avenue marked its 30th anniversary with its January 2025 issue, in which Fortney and other alumni reflected on the title's early years — evidence of a print magazine still publishing on schedule more than three decades after its launch.

Content and Coverage

Avenue's editorial mix is the classic city-magazine blend, executed with a specifically Calgary lens. Features profile the city's personalities — chefs, artists, entrepreneurs, philanthropists and civic figures — alongside service journalism on dining, shopping, fashion, home decor and design, travel and leisure, and the arts. The magazine publishes substantial reported features on issues shaping the city, from downtown revitalization to the economics of its arts scene.

The annual franchises anchor the editorial calendar. Best Restaurants is the magazine's flagship food feature, expanded online with restaurant coverage published throughout the year. Top 40 Under 40 profiles forty Calgarians under forty who are shaping the city, and the announcement month is reliably the magazine's biggest traffic period. Best Neighbourhoods applies data and editorial judgment to the question of where in Calgary to live. The Made in Alberta Awards recognize Alberta-made products across categories.

Online, the editorial lineup extends the print content with fresh stories on restaurant and store openings, events and activities, seasonal packages on patios, gift guides, regional travel and outdoor pursuits, and a regularly updated events calendar. The content is written by locals for locals, in the magazine's own description of its approach.

Audience and Reach

Avenue targets what its publisher describes as active, affluent and sophisticated Calgary consumers — readers with discerning tastes who turn to the magazine when making lifestyle purchases. The print magazine is free, distributed at racks and locations across the city, a model designed to maximize reach among the local businesses and events the magazine covers.

The audience figures available for Avenue are the publisher's own. In a 2023 interview, president Käthe Lemon said the company had increased Avenue's print distribution that year from 37,000 to 45,000 copies per issue, with a pickup rate of around 98 per cent, and that avenuecalgary.com was averaging around 600,000 pageviews a month, with the signature editorial features — Best Restaurants, Best Neighbourhoods and Top 40 Under 40 — each topping a million pageviews in the month they launch. Those are company-reported figures from 2023, presented here as such; no current independently audited circulation for the magazine is published, and none is asserted.

What can be verified independently of the publisher's numbers is the magazine's longevity and continued output: an unbroken run from 1994 through the January 2025 anniversary issue and beyond, with the website publishing new Calgary stories through 2026.

Digital Presence

Avenue's digital centre is avenuecalgary.com, which publishes daily local coverage — city life, food and drink, arts and culture, people and real estate — and hosts the online editions of its signature programs. The site carries the magazine's newsletters, which the publisher actively promotes as a way for readers to stay connected to the city, and the A-List membership program, which offers members a closer relationship with the magazine and its events. Avenue also maintains active social media channels, including Instagram, where it promotes stories, covers and events.

RedPoint has invested in digital as a second front door to the magazine: the website's editorial lineup explicitly extends the print content, and online-only coverage of openings, events and seasonal activities appears between print issues. The January 2025 anniversary issue and the magazine's ongoing 2026 web coverage show a title operating on both tracks.

Ownership and Organisation

Avenue is published by RedPoint Media Group Inc., a Calgary company that describes itself as the largest locally owned magazine publisher in the city. RedPoint was owned for most of Avenue's history by the Graves family — first Don Graves, then his son Pete Graves — until February 2023, when Pete Graves sold the company to Käthe Lemon and Roger Jewett. Lemon, Avenue's editor for 15 years before becoming company president, leads day-to-day operations; Jewett, previously the company's chief financial officer and a veteran of Calgary marketing firms, serves as chief executive.

Alongside Avenue, RedPoint is a custom publisher: it produces Leap magazine for the Alberta Cancer Foundation, SPUR for the Calgary Foundation, Create Calgary for Calgary Arts Development and the BOMA Building Guide, among other contract titles, and it previously published WestJet's in-flight magazine. The company has also expanded into digital design, content creation and fractional marketing services under its current owners.

Contact and Availability

Avenue Calgary is published every two months and is available free at distribution points across Calgary; paid print subscriptions and A-List memberships are offered through avenuecalgary.com, where the current issue, the Best Restaurants and Top 40 Under 40 features, and newsletter sign-ups are also found. The magazine's website publishes new stories daily between print issues.

RedPoint Media Group is based in Calgary, Alberta. In its February 2023 ownership announcement, carried by the Alberta Magazine Publishers Association, the company listed 403-232-7706 as its media contact number. Correspondence for the magazine is handled through the contact and membership pages at avenuecalgary.com.